4 ms·

France reports nearly half a million new Covid cases, a record increase

14 points by DannyCasolaro 5y ago

captainbland 5y ago
It's interesting that the UK didn't see anything quite like that, more like ~150k in one day. Although I suspect many are avoiding testing in the UK so that they don't have to miss work if it comes up positive because of our meagre sick pay policies.
vnchr 5y ago
France has had some of the most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in the world. Interesting.
- belter 5y ago
  And a vaccination rate of almost 80% https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA
marvel_boy 5y ago
Maybe the most stringent restrictions are not useful at all.
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
DannyCasolaro 5y ago
To add some context to this number, France recorded new confirmed cases (there may be quite a bit more that went unreported) in 0.7% of its total population in one day.
refurb 5y ago
Australia hit record highs last week, so did Canada. But at the same time, the more you test the more you find. Pre-Omnicron, most people I know never tested if they got sick, as long as it didn't feel like more than a cold.
- DannyCasolaro 5y ago
  Test positivity rates are through the roof, and wastewater sampling also indicates a huge surge of infections. I don't think this can be that easily dismissed as an artifact of testing.
loceng 5y ago
Has anyone else been surprised that COVID numbers generally provide very narrow/shallow or no context for the numbers prevented, for example, how COVID numbers compare to flu season? Mind you I don't think any nation has ever done any mass flu testing before, so not all numbers are available.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  One proxy for the context that you are seeking is https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps That site reports weekly excess death numbers for most of Europe and Israel as well. Excess death appears to be defined not as excess from an average year, but as excess from an average period where there are no flu or other diseases circulating. This makes sense because the goal of collecting these data is to know quickly whether there are breakouts of diseases, and thus the baseline must be "a typical year without flu" rather than "a typical year". Thus, the numbers give you some idea of the impact of covid compared with the flu, at least in terms of deaths. Occasionally you can see other phenomena such as the impact of heat waves in the summer. I understand that the baseline is adjusted for population growth. In the area covered it looks like there are about 70000 baseline deaths per week, or roughly 3.5M deaths for a year. There were about 100K excess deaths in 2017 and 2019, about 160K excess deaths in 2018, 400K in 2020 and 350K in 2021. Eyeballing, the current wave seems to be comparable to the 2017-2018 winter episode. I find the graphs by age very interesting, especially the 0-14 range.
rasz 5y ago
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/#graph-deaths-daily https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/#gr... Omicron - 0.3-0.5% mortality
- eliaspro 5y ago
  So we can expect 1500-2500 deaths from those infections alone...
rsynnott 5y ago
At these sort of levels, as countries hit their omicron peaks, the case count is more a benchmark of their testing infrastructure than anything else.

14 points by DannyCasolaro 5y ago

It's interesting that the UK didn't see anything quite like that, more like ~150k in one day. Although I suspect many are avoiding testing in the UK so that they don't have to miss work if it comes up positive because of our meagre sick pay policies.

vnchr 5y ago

France has had some of the most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in the world. Interesting.

belter 5y ago
And a vaccination rate of almost 80% https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA

marvel_boy 5y ago

Maybe the most stringent restrictions are not useful at all.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

DannyCasolaro 5y ago

To add some context to this number, France recorded new confirmed cases (there may be quite a bit more that went unreported) in 0.7% of its total population in one day.

refurb 5y ago

Australia hit record highs last week, so did Canada. But at the same time, the more you test the more you find. Pre-Omnicron, most people I know never tested if they got sick, as long as it didn't feel like more than a cold.

DannyCasolaro 5y ago
Test positivity rates are through the roof, and wastewater sampling also indicates a huge surge of infections. I don't think this can be that easily dismissed as an artifact of testing.

loceng 5y ago

Has anyone else been surprised that COVID numbers generally provide very narrow/shallow or no context for the numbers prevented, for example, how COVID numbers compare to flu season? Mind you I don't think any nation has ever done any mass flu testing before, so not all numbers are available.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago
One proxy for the context that you are seeking is https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps That site reports weekly excess death numbers for most of Europe and Israel as well. Excess death appears to be defined not as excess from an average year, but as excess from an average period where there are no flu or other diseases circulating. This makes sense because the goal of collecting these data is to know quickly whether there are breakouts of diseases, and thus the baseline must be "a typical year without flu" rather than "a typical year". Thus, the numbers give you some idea of the impact of covid compared with the flu, at least in terms of deaths. Occasionally you can see other phenomena such as the impact of heat waves in the summer. I understand that the baseline is adjusted for population growth. In the area covered it looks like there are about 70000 baseline deaths per week, or roughly 3.5M deaths for a year. There were about 100K excess deaths in 2017 and 2019, about 160K excess deaths in 2018, 400K in 2020 and 350K in 2021. Eyeballing, the current wave seems to be comparable to the 2017-2018 winter episode. I find the graphs by age very interesting, especially the 0-14 range.

rasz 5y ago

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/#graph-deaths-daily https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/#gr... Omicron - 0.3-0.5% mortality

eliaspro 5y ago
So we can expect 1500-2500 deaths from those infections alone...

rsynnott 5y ago

At these sort of levels, as countries hit their omicron peaks, the case count is more a benchmark of their testing infrastructure than anything else.